Related papers: Operational approach to metastability
Stochastic systems often exhibit multiple viable metastable states that are long-lived. Over very long timescales, fluctuations may push the system to transition between them, drastically changing its macroscopic configuration. In realistic…
Metastability is a physical phenomenon ubiquitous in first order phase transitions. A fruitful mathematical way to approach this phenomenon is the study of rare transitions Markov chains. For Metropolis chains associated with Statistical…
We derive the theory of open quantum system dynamics intervened by a series of nonselective measurements. We analyze the cases of time independent and time dependent Hamiltonian dynamics in between the measurements and find the approximate…
We provide a rigorous generalization of the quantum adiabatic theorem for open systems described by a Markovian master equation with time-dependent Liouvillian $\mathcal{L}(t)$. We focus on the finite system case relevant for adiabatic…
We establish a link between metastability and a discrete time-crystalline phase in a periodically driven open quantum system. The mechanism we highlight requires neither the system to display any microscopic symmetry nor the presence of…
The study of the physical properties of open quantum systems is at the heart of many present investigations which aim to describe their dynamical evolution, on theoretical ground and through physical realizations. Here we develop a…
Ergodicity-breaking and slow relaxation are intriguing aspects of nonequilibrium dynamics both in classical and in quantum settings. These phenomena are typically associated with phase transitions, e.g. the emergence of metastable regimes…
We present a detailed account of the technical aspects of stochastic quantum molecular dynamics, an approach introduced recently by the authors [H. Appel and M. Di Ventra, Phys. Rev. B 80 212303 (2009)] to describe coupled electron-ion…
Thermodynamics entails a set of mathematical conditions on quantum Markovian dynamics. In particular, strict energy conservation between the system and environment implies that the dissipative dynamical map commutes with the unitary system…
Using the mapping of the Fokker-Planck description of classical stochastic dynamics onto a quantum Hamiltonian, we argue that a dynamical glass transition in the former must have a precise definition in terms of a quantum phase transition…
We investigate the dynamics of open quantum systems which are initially correlated with their environment. The strategy of our approach is to analyze how given, fixed initial correlations modify the evolution of the open system with respect…
We demonstrate a surprising connection between pure steady state entanglement and relaxation timescales in an extremely broad class of Markovian open systems, where two (possibly many-body) systems $A$ and $B$ interact locally with a common…
We study large deviations of the dynamical activity in the random orthogonal model (ROM). This is a fully connected spin-glass model with one-step replica symmetry breaking behaviour, consistent with the random first-order transition…
Investigations of quantum and mesoscopic thermodynamics force one to answer two fundamental questions associated with the foundations of statistical mechanics: (i) how does macroscopic irreversibility emerge from microscopic reversibility?…
This paper studies nonstationary open dynamical systems from the statistical viewpoint. By open, we mean that trajectories may escape through holes in the phase space. By nonstationary, we mean that the dynamical model itself (as well as…
We consider a class of open quantum many-body Lindblad dynamics characterized by an all-to-all coupling Hamiltonian and by dissipation featuring collective ``state-dependent" rates. The latter encodes local incoherent transitions that…
We consider the non-equilibrium behavior of a central spin system where the central spin is periodically reset to its ground state. The quantum mechanical evolution under this effectively dissipative dynamics is described by a discrete-time…
The meaning of time in an open quantum system is considered under the assumption that both, system and environment, are quantum mechanical objects. The Hamilton operator of the system is non-Hermitian. Its imaginary part is the time…
We present a formalism to describe slowly decaying systems in the context of finite Markov chains obeying detailed balance. We show that phase space can be partitioned into approximately decoupled regions, in which one may introduce…
A general system of particles (of one or several species) on a one dimensional lattice with boundaries is considered. Two general behaviors of such systems are investigated. The stationary behavior of the system, and the dominant way of the…